The present invention relates to a new and improved construction of a controlled deflection roll, also known in the art as a roll having bending or sag compensation.
Generally speaking, the controlled deflection roll of the present development is of the type comprising a stationary support and a roll shell mounted to be rotatable about the stationary support. The roll shell is supported upon pressure or support elements which can be activated by a pressurized fluid medium, these pressure or support elements forming a number of pressure zones to which the pressurized fluid medium can be infed, at different pressures, by infeed tubes or pipes arranged in a central bore of the stationary support. The infeed tubes or pipes are connected at an end of the stationary support with supply lines or conduits. Partition walls are arranged in the bore of the stationary support, these partition walls separating the sections or portions of the bore from one another which are correlated with the individual pressure zones and in which there terminates in each case one of the tubes. The infeed tubes are arranged to extend next to one another.
Controlled deflection rolls of this type are known from U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,047,273, 4,048,701 and German Patent Publication No. 2,657,061. With the controlled deflection roll taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,273 the infeed of hydraulic pressurized fluid medium is accomplished by concentrically arranged infeed tubes or pipes. Although this heretofore known construction has proved to be satisfactory, nonetheless, difficulties exist if the controlled deflection roll has a greater number of zones, and therefore, there must be arranged concentrically with respect to one another a great number of tubes.
According to U.S. Pat. No. 4,048,701 an intermediate space or compartment between an expanded end section of the bore and a tube inserted therein serves for the withdrawal of the liquid out of the interior of the controlled deflection roll.
According to German Patent Publication No. 2,657,061 there is proposed an arrangement of parallelly adjacent tubes for the infeed of the pressurized fluid medium, along which there can be adjustably positioned the partition walls.
Both embodiments are relatively complicated. One such embodiment requires a widened bore and an additional tube, the other an adjustment mechanism, by means of which it is possible to retain the partition walls at small spacing.